We are all made of stars

Ponji in India (1967).

History, as we know it, is the story of royalty and generals and does
not contain the memory of the millions who succumbed or who tried to
build a normal life.

This also applies to modern popular history. Pink Floyd & Syd
Barrett biographies and the so-called Sixties counter-culture
studies that have appeared all repeat the memories of a small, nearly
incestuous, circle of people who made it, one way or another. You always
stumble upon those who have become the royalty and generals of the
Underground. Others are less known, the lower rank officers, but still
officers.

Other people had less luck, but at least we know some of their stories.
Syd Barrett, although a millionaire in pounds, still is the prototype of
the drug-burned psychedelic rock star. But there are other members of
the Sixties Cambridge mafia, a term coined by David Gilmour, who didn’t
make it and whose stories are less known.

Pip

Ian Pip Carter, whose career started in Cambridge in the early
Sixties as pill pusher, had to fight a heroine addiction for most of his
life. After a visit to his friend (and employer) David Gilmour in Greece
Pip was imprisoned for drug possession where he was forced to go cold
turkey but he fell again for the drug once released, despite the fact
that the Pink Floyd guitarist send him to (and paid for) several rehab
sessions. “The needle had dug so far; searching relentlessly for a vein,
(that it) had decimated the nervous system in his left arm”, writes
Matthew Scurfield in his account of the Cantabrigian London mob.

Described by Nick Mason as 'one of the world's most spectacularly inept
roadies' the Floyd eventually had to let Pip go. He was the one who
accidentally destroyed a giant jelly installation at the Roundhouse on
the 15th October 1966 by parking the Pink Floyd van in the middle of it
or, different witnesses tell different stories, by removing the wooden
boards that supported the bath that kept the jelly. (You can read the story,
taken from Julian Palacios 1988 Lost In The Woods biography here.)

In 1988 Carter was killed during a pub brawl in Cambridge. Mark Blake
writes how David Gilmour used to help his old Cambridge friends whenever
they were in financial trouble and Pip had been no exception.

People familiar with the finer layers of the Syd Barrett history know
how Maharaj
Charan Singh, the Master of the Sant
Mat sect, rejected the rock star for obvious reasons. The religion
was strictly vegetarian, absolutely forbid the use of alcohol and drugs
and didn’t allow sex outside marriage. Syd 'I've got some pork
chops in the fridge' Barrett hopelessly failed on all those points.

Ponji

It is believed that John Paul Robinson, nicknamed Ponji, a very ardent
follower of the Path, tried to lure Syd into the sect after he had
visited India in 1967. And probably it had been another Cantabrigian,
Paul Charrier who converted Ponji first. (Paul Charrier was one of the
people present at Syd's trip in 1965 where he was intrigued for hours by
a matchbox, a plum and an orange. This event later inspired Storm
Thorgerson for the Syd Barrett (compilation album) record cover
and an impressive and moving Pink Floyd backdrop movie.)

John Paul Robinson had his own demons to deal with and in the Sixties he
visited a progressive therapist who administered him LSD to open his doors
of perception. Only after he had returned from India he ‘literally
seemed to be shining with abundance’, passing the message to all his
friends that he had been reborn. Ponji gave up his job, wanted to lead
the life of a beggar monk, but his internal demons would take over once
in every while.

He'd sit on the stairs with his elbows on his knees and forehead placed
carefully at the tips of his fingers, reeling out the same old mantra
proclaiming how he was just a tramp, that his body was an illusion, a
mere prison, a temporary holding place for his soul.

The story goes that he shouted ‘I refuse to be a coward for the rest of
my life’ just before he jumped in front of an oncoming train (1979?).

Kaleidoscope

We only happen to know these people in function of their relationship
with Syd Barrett. Their paths crossed for a couple of months and we, the
anoraks, are only interested in that one small event as if for the rest
of these peoples lives nothing further of interest has really happened.

But the truth is that their encounter with Barrett is just one small
glittering diamond out of a kaleidoscope of encounters, adventures,
joys, grieves, moments of happiness and sadness. It is the kaleidoscope
of life: falling in love and making babies that eventually will make
babies on their own. A granddaughter's smile today is of much more
importance than the faint remembrance of a dead rock star's smile from
over 40 years ago.

The Church should be probing for the kaleidoscope world and not for that
one single shiny stone. Syd may have been a star, but our daily universe
carries millions of those.